MI6 are brought in on a simple smuggling matter - someone appears
to be hoarding diamonds, and the Government are worried that the
stability of the diamond market might be threatened if all the
hoarded diamonds are released at the same time. Bond (Sean Connery)
infiltrates the smuggling ring and follows it to Las Vegas.

In parallel, he discovers that whoever is running the smuggling
is closing the operation down and killing everyone who was working
on it. He tracks the diamonds to a laboratory belonging to millionaire
Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean) in the Arizona desert, where it would
appear that they are being fitted into a satellite which is ready
for launch.

Breaking into Whyte's penthouse suite in the hotel he owns (the
Whyte House), Bond discovers that Whyte has been abducted and
Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) is running everything.

Blofeld's plan is to launch a satellite with a powerful laser
on board (for which he needs the diamonds). Once it's launched,
he will blackmail the world. Blofeld tries to kill Bond, who escapes
and releases Whyte, but in the interim Blofeld's satellite is
launched and Blofeld destroys a US missile base in North Dakota,
a Russian submarine and a Chinese missile base.

He intends holding an international auction with nuclear supremacy
as the prize. When the US launch an attack on his base - a converted
oil rig - he tries to destroy Washington, DC, but Bond destroys
his base and apparently kills him again.